OS X :: Major Bug With Rules In Apple Mail

There is a bug when it comes to rules in Mail in 10.6.4 and 10.6.5 (and possibly earlier versions of Mail as well).

Here are the steps to reproduce the bug:

1. Make sure you have an IMAP account in Mail.

2. In your IMAP account's Mailbox Behaviors, UNCHECK the box that says "Store draft messages on server". This ensures that your draft messages will be saved locally on your Mac instead of on your IMAP server.

3. Create one new rule that would ALWAYS be true of ANY new message that you would be creating in mail, such as:
"From contains (your email address)"
OR
"Sender is a member of group (name of a group that your own card is a part of)"
Don't create both of those rules... just choose one.

4. The action that the rule should perform is:
"Set Color of text (choose a color)"
Make sure that you're NOT setting a BACKGROUND color, but rather that you're setting a TEXT color.

5. Save the rule.

6. Now, create a new message and start typing.

7. Save the message as a draft once.

8. Notice that the message shows up in your Drafts folder with the text color applied that you set in #4 above. This actually is a small bug right there, because rules shouldn't apply to messages in your drafts folder, but this first bug is not a big deal.

9. Continue editing the message.

10. Save the message as a draft for a 2nd time.

11. This is where the major bug takes place.... after you've saved your draft for the 2nd time. Look in your Drafts folder. Your message has now shown up in the list of Drafts message with the BACKGROUND COLOR of the subject changed to the TEXT COLOR that you set in #4, which makes the message unreadable if you had chosen a dark text color. Even though you specified a TEXT color, Mail incorrectly applied a BACKGROUND color to the message. This is completely annoying if you're working on a bunch of drafts, because you can't even read the names of the drafts that you're working on without individually opening them up.